The Actress in High Life eBook

“Why,” asked Mrs. Shortridge, “do
these people always build their towns on hills?”

“That is a true English question,” answered
L’Isle. “At home, in our bleak northern
climate, we naturally seek sheltered situations.
These people as naturally select an airy site, above
the parching heat and poisoned air of the valleys.
In founding colonies in tropical countries we English,
and the Dutch, have constantly blundered, acting as
if still at home; and choosing low and pestilential
spots, establish only hospitals and graveyards where
we meant to build towns; while the Spaniards and Portuguese,
from the instinct of habit, select the most salubrious
situations within their reach. Moreover, high
points are safer from attack, and stronger to resist
an enemy; and the Christians of the peninsula were
taught by seven centuries of conflict with the Moors,
that the safety of a man’s house is the first
point, its convenience the second. Now, we islanders
have long been but a half military people. Content
with incuring the guilt of war abroad, we have carefully
abstained from bringing it home to our own doors.”

“But we never wage any but just wars,”
said Lady Mabel.

“We, at least,” said L’Isle, “always
find some plausible grounds on which to justify our
wars—­to ourselves.”

They were now on the outskirts of the undulating plain,
on which a rich soil overlying the granite rocks extends
from Evora southward to the city of Beja. The
signs of cultivation and population multiplied as
they went on. The fields became larger and more
frequent; detached farm houses were seen on either
hand, and they fell in on the road with many peasants
riding large and spirited asses, or driving oxen all
light bays with enormous horns, and so sleek and well
grown, that the commissary gazed on them with admiring
eye and watering mouth, and pronounced them equally
fit for the yoke or the shambles.

It was a relief to find themselves once more in a
cultivated country, and Lady Mabel gazed round, admiring
the prospect. “There is,” she observed,
“one drawback to the landscape. At home,
one of the most enlivening features in our rural scenes,
are the white sheep scattered on the hills, but here
they are almost black.”

“But the goats you see are generally white,”
answered L’Isle. “It is, too, the
more picturesque animal, and well supplies what is
wanting in the sheep.”

Evora was at hand. L’Isle launched out
into an erudite discourse on the aqueduct of Sertorius,
which, stretching its long line of arches from the
neighboring hills, was converging with their road to
the city. As they entered it he was giving Lady
Mabel all the pros and cons, as to whether it was
really the work of that redoubtable Roman. The
commissary was luxuriously anticipating the shade and
rest before him, when to his surprise and regret,
L’Isle led the party another way, and halted
them before a small but striking building, which here
crowned the aqueduct at its termination in the city.